Jumpstart for an urban heart

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Correction

An article, "Jumpstart for an urban heart", should have stated
the tender race for Parramatta's Civic Place was between Multiplex
and Grocon, not Multiplex and Leighton.

- August 6, 2005

Plans are afoot to restore vigour to the heritage core
of Parramatta, writesElizabeth
Farrelly.

You remember the line: a woman needs a man like a fish needs a
bicycle. Had Gloria Steinem phrased her immortal quip with just one
different word, the entire history of feminism might have been less
(as it were) glorious. While fish may not need bicycles, they do,
it seems, need ladders. Especially Australian fish and especially
at a number of well-meant historic weirs on the Parramatta River.
Fish architecture isn't the biggest thing happening in Parramatta,
but it is both an imagination catcher and an irresistible,
bite-sized symbol of our need to make reparations to the
planet.

There are four weirs in question, between Charles Street at the
estuarine harbour head and the Upstream Weir in Parramatta Park.
All are heritage-listed or essential for flood control, or both.
All, however, profoundly disrupt the migratory lifestyles of up to
11 native fish species, including bass, striped mullet and the eels
"that lie down", for which the Dharug Aborigines named the city.
Some, such as the bass, live upriver but spawn only at sea; others
vice versa. Either way, the weirs form impassable barriers where
both fingerlings and adults congregate hopelessly, delighting
winged predators and exotic competitors.

The ladders, pending approval, range from a chain of simulated
sandstone refuge ponds up one side of the river to a working
mechanical lock. Each would facilitate the passage of our
comparatively weak fish, adapted to the slow rivers of a flat
country, against an artificially enhanced river flow. The idea is
not only to restore the river's health, and that of the fish, but
also that the relatively aggressive native bass (or freshwater
perch) will compete with the introduced carp, keeping this cane
toad of the waterways in check.

At a cost of $600,000, it is a small project, I guess, but a
powerful symbol, not least because of the crucial role the fish and
eels played in pulling the entire Australian settlement project
though its starvation years. Not just fish, either. Loaves, too,
since it was Parramatta Park, the region's bread basket as sown by
James Ruse, that staved off famine in Sydney town. Now Sydney's
sister CBD is threatened by famine of another kind. How do you
rescue a city centre that is old and a little tired, with a rich
and vigorous history, but burdened by the very combination of
working-class culture and heritage fabric that constitutes its
greatest strength? It's the million-dollar question.

David Borger is Parramatta's energetic thirtysomething Lord
Mayor. A planner by profession and urbanist by temperament, he is
in the throes of a master's degree in urban design. Normal enough,
you might think, but seeing an urban place as an urban place,
rather than a cash cow, is something of a turnaround for this
city.

Ten years ago, when Borger was first elected as a councillor, he
faced a wall of what he calls "rissole culture": a culture
dominated by war veterans and leagues clubs, presuming an unhealthy
intimacy between developers, councillors and planning staff and
flavoured by a distinct whiff of corruption. It wasn't peculiar to
Parramatta, or even NSW, or even Australia. In Parramatta, where
councillor intervention in particular development assessments was
the norm, rissole culture was shameless and persistent. "It was
nothing," Borger says, "for council to vary its own height or
[floor space ratio] rules by 150 per cent."

The State Government's 1998 report on Parramatta Council details
an especially enchanting instance of rissolism. A council-owned
riverbank site, complete with heritage church, was for sale.
Meriton was interested, but negotiations to purchase hinged on
negotiations to develop. This gave the council three hats - vendor,
planner, consent authority - encouraging it to mould development
rules to its own (and/or Meriton's) financial interest. Further,
the proposal was handled by the council's director of environmental
services whose son suddenly took a job with, well, Meriton. The
report found no corruption in this instance but pointed out that
both the system and the culture provided clear incentives in that
direction.

Now, all that is changing. The energy in the air is palpable.
There are huge developments: the very accomplished and
multi-award-winning NSW police headquarters building by Bates Smart
McCutcheon; the $100 million railway station improvement project;
the vast Civic Place redevelopment, subject to a tender
race between Leighton and Multiplex and likely to produce
a number of towers of up to 42 storeys (commercial, residential,
retail and civic) around a central public space; and a major
expansion of the Westfield Parramatta shopping centre along the
southern side of the railway line.

All this is fine and good - apart, perhaps, from the Westfield
expansion, which adds 11 cinemas, 70 shops and 200 car spaces to
the already gargantuan shoppingtown, and which can only exacerbate
its vampire effect on Church Street Mall. Westfield defenders point
to its ability to draw 18 million people annually into Parramatta.
But I say this: if the shopping hordes stay trapped inside
Westfield's teflon bubble - precisely its design brief - where's
the benefit?

Borger, though, is undaunted. He bubbles with ideas: plumping
the garbage lanes with tiny bars and cafes, filling the 83 heritage
buildings on the Cumberland Hospital site with artists' studios,
sustaining and expanding the biennial Parramatta Design Excellence
Awards, and reintroducing traffic flow into the top half of Church
Street Mall by Christmas. This last ambition could test him, since
putting flow back into streets is every bit as difficult,
politically, as putting flow back into rivers. And, of course,
there are the fish ladders, busy taking Parramatta from a place
where the eels lie down to one where the eels stand up and
walk.

Speaking of rivers, it might be worth looking to nature for
clues. Parramatta began experimentally, as James Ruse's last-ditch
experiment in 1789 in colonial survival. My feeling is that a bold,
necessity-driven eco-experiment could pay off again. Cleaning up
the river, say. Liberating it from that grey storm-drain
straitjacket, lining it with organic and growers' markets (modelled
on London, not Fox Studios), and giving the city the bright, green,
truly urban heart it should always have had.

Meanwhile, I am flattered to find my first column in this spot
blogged by Sydney City's lone Liberal councillor, Shayne Mallard.
"Familiar and boorish cynicism," writes Mallard. Well, "cynical" I
graciously accept, but "boorish" is just too kind. For the truly
boorish and cynical, not to say downright dopey, one need look no
further than the Libs themselves, unanimously supporting Bob Carr's
totalitarian amendments to the Environmental Planning and
Assessment Act in the House, then whingeing because democracy
doesn't get a look-in to the new de-salivation, sorry,
desalination, plant that would pump hot brine into the bay. No raw
prawn for Kurnell. All crustacea to be thoroughly boiled.